This is an I-Heart podcast.

And we return to our American stories.

And up next, a story about when our 33rd president made an all-important

visit to a small town in Iowa. Here's our own Monty Montgomery with a story.

Dexter, Iowa is a small town with a lot of heart. And even though its population has never

exceeded a thousand people, there's a lot of history there. And it was also

once the presidential campaign stop. Here's Rod Stanley with more on that. September

1948, President Truman came to Dexter, Iowa for the national plowing match.

And it was a big deal. The national plowing match was a big, big deal.

But what exactly is a plowing match?

Roughly put, it's a competition to see who's the best farmer.

They judged them on, I mean, they judged them on different things.

They brought their tractors and their plows,

and there were judges that judged how well you plowed the field,

how straight it was, how open it was.

They had some other, like, conservation, like making a pond.

They made a pond.

On my uncle's farm, they blew up, they used in dynamite,

and they blew up land, they made a waterway to drain water off and stuff.

This was a statewide thing, so it was a national thing too.

So you had lots of people coming in from, like,

there was an airport south of Dexter, southwest of Dexter, and that day, like, 120

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